The Ridiculous Bad Faith of the Republican Attacks on Ilhan Omar

Peter Beinart sums it up very well:

The following two things are true. First, Representative Ilhan Omar was wrong to tweet that the American government’s support of Israel is “all about the Benjamins.” Secondly, she’s being judged by a grotesque double standard. Her fiercest critics in Congress are guiltier of bigotry than she is.

I’m just going to excerpt the teaser because it’s all worth reading.

The fact that Omar was being attacked in bad faith doesn’t mean she was wrong to apologize; the tweets were bad and the apology was merited because it was merited, and because there’s no reason to think she’s an anti-Semite it was also correct for her to keep her committee positions. But it’s just ridiculous for members of Donald Trump’s Republican Party to pretend to care and for anybody in the media to pretend to believe them.

And needless to say the fact that less than a week ago the nation’s five most elite legal Republicans gave a big fat ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ to some of the most flagrant religious discrimination you’ll ever see because it was directed as a Muslim man really draws a line under it.